The ANDATA Spring Release 5.2 bundles the results of our recent software development activities as well as the latest improvements in reliability and stability.

When it comes to Stipulator, we focused this release on a general performance increase as well as on user experience improvements. Raw attribute selectors, which are a favorite feature for many users, are now better integrated in the interaction panel to the left side of Stipulator 's main window. From here it is now possible to add, edit and remove selectors directly. Moreover, the already powerful data visualization capabilities of Stipulator have been further enhanced with the timeline plot, which works very well to gather an overview over measurement data, as well as additional features to interconnect several plots with each other.

Following MathWorks® efforts to reduce reliance on third-party technologies, user interfaces based on Java Swing in our tools are being gradually ported to current MATLAB® web-based technology. This allows to benefit from further improvements in performance and responsiveness with future MATLAB releases. Configurator, which is the data structure specification and UI framework that we use for most dialogs across our tools, is now capable to work solely with MATLAB web-based UI technology. We are going to continue porting dialogs and user interfaces in the forthcoming releases.

The following list presents the most significant changes introduced with our release 5.2:

• Stipulator
  • The interaction panel offers the possibility to add (button "+") and remove (button "-") raw attribute selectors.
  • For selected cases the respective source files can now be depicted within a timeline plot. In this way, measurement time and duration of multiple cases can be visualized easily. See this blog post for examples and further information.
  • Figure linking can now be configured via plot preferences at section Link figures in dialog Analysis > Preferences....
  • All Java-based dialogs in Stipulator are being gradually replaced by web-based, MATLAB native dialogs created with AppDesigner. These are used now in Cases > Set > Modify t0..., Cases > Set > Modify tEnd..., Actions > Edit > Modify... as well as context menus Modify t0, Modify t_End and Modify actions.
  • Added a new function File > Show project directory to Stipulator to open the directory of the open Stipulator project in the corresponding operating system file manager. This functionality is available via command stipulator('openprojectdir') as well.
  • A reader type may be passed as argument to commands stipulator('addchannelsfromfile') and stipulator('addattributesfromfile'), making it possible to circumvent the automatic reader assignment, which is based solely on file extension.
  • Do not support a separate case tEnd value for each action anymore. This undocumented feature is not being supported any more. The same effect can be reached by appending trigger times to the action appropriately. On loading existing files with more than one tEnd value defined, new trigger times are appended to actions as needed in order to generate the same data as before on extraction.
  • Actions having invalid names (containing special characters) are automatically renamed on file load. The user is informed about this change.
  • Desupported calculation mode isIgnoreChannelData in command stipulator('calcsignals'). Signature change: optional input argument 5 of 6 has been removed.
  • Command stipulator('reorderactions') warns the user when only one action is defined.
  • Reworked input arguments in command stipulator('getattributes'). The documentation has been updated to clarify the usage of this command.
  • (SI-332) Fixed an issue with scaling factors being applied twice to the raw data when signals with scaling factors already defined are insourced through Signals > Insource.
  • (SI-329) Fixed a bug where the number of actions being displayed in the footer of Stipulator's main window is always 0/0.
    
  • (SI-337) Fixed an issue where Cases > Set > t_End relative to action and context menu Modify * > set t_End by action over column t_End show an empty list of actions.
    
  • Fixed an error that happened when importing reference attributes or reference channels from a file.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented introducing more than one trigger time on dialogs Actions > Edit > Modify... or File > Reference attributes > Edit...
  • Fixed an issue where categories created through command stipulator('addcategory') might have their entity arrays stored with inconsistent dimensions.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented the attributes selected in Analysis > Plot Attributes > Table being remembered across calls.
    
• Brainer
  • Added a feature to duplicate input sets. This is accessible through the "..."-Button in dialog Data > Parameters > Inputs... close to the pull-down menu "Select input set".
  • Fixed an issue that might cause an error when replacing data blocks after extraction in Stipulator.
  • Solved an error that occurred when an input set was removed, that was recently created without closing dialog Data > Parameters > Inputs... in between.
• Expectator
  
  • (SI-341) The interactive dialog to calibrate an expectation of type SignalBand now updates the plot even when the channel data selected is empty.
  • Uniqueness of alias names for channels and attributes is enforced when defining expectations of type BooleanExpression.
  • For expectations of type BooleanExpression, a check has been added to ensure that channels do not match more than one alias.
  • (SI-336) Fixed an error that happened when trying to use filter function ssaction2channel in a signal processing in Expectator.
  • Fixed an issue where certain data access operations failed if some of the signal structures had a userdata field.
• General
  • Configurator, which the ANDATA framework used (among other functions) to generate user interface dialogs in our tools, now supports the MATLAB web-based UI components based on AppDesigner. Java-based dialogs are going to be gradually replaced by web-based dialogs across our tools.
  • The list of recently used files in menu File displays now the 10 most recently open files in all our tools.
  • Added new filter function ssduration2attr, which creates an attribute that holds the duration of the given channel.
  • Added new time series distance functions corrcoef, cov, xcorr (raw). These new functions are available in menu Analysis > Distances > *timeseries in Stipulator.
  • Added new helper function inputParser2.m, which extends the functionality of MATLAB inputParser with parameter aliases.
  • Warnings about usage of javacomponent are now being suppressed in our tools when executed on MATLAB releases where such usage is tested.
  • Prevented unnecessary "address already in use" messages in log file AndataTools.log that occurred when the log server was already running on start attempt.
  • The content of package Misc/+andata/+utils/+gui was moved to package Misc/+andata/+gui/+utils and forwarding was established.
  • Filter function sssync now checks for equidistance in a time series with an increased tolerance.
  • Input argument checks for ssnew were made stricter.
  • Removed check for the Signal Processing Toolbox™ to use xcorr, since this is now a MATLAB native function.
  • Ensured that ssreadisoattributes can read numerical attributes with trailing dots.
  • Revised behavior of ssscale when data is not numeric and scaling factor is 1.
  • Fixed a Mapper issue that prevented correct plotting of data curves through Postprocessing > Plot > Map for data blocks with descriptions.
  • An issue in ssreadiso was resolved for cases in which no 'Unit' field is present.